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I found that out while playing a wildly sub-optimal Debonaire/Tactician on my 1st play. I still think Rogues have a ton of fun shenanigans.

Oh damn! That's cool. I hadn't looked into using riposte. You could get 3 attack rolls per disengage with that! Very cool. As far as Troub vs. Skald, originally I wasn't convinced there was a difference, but I can see that at Higher-levels you wouldn't be able to spam 2-3 invocations back-to-back. But... Last night I was thinking on how Chants work. I think Troubadour may have some fun interactions with 'Chant' Dancing. Rather than theory-craft, I'll do some testing and let you know the results.

Ahh. But the Lover Cried Out has a significantly longer Duration. You only need 20 Intellect for a 2 Round Charm. (8 second base). With Skald, its only 3 Phrases! Nice suggestions on the spell criticals. I am really enjoying my FF/Skald play atm. I don't use melee attacks... ever, so maybe Troubadour is better? They are virtually identical at the moment, but later on, doubling up on Phrases would be nice. I also can't imagine Full Attacking over casting Forbidden Fist. Alternating Fist + Stun/Paralyze/Fear/Charm is just too good. He's like the Protagonist of an action movie - Witty Line, Punch. Witty Line, Punch.

It definitely does! I think you'd find the guide a little disappointing: Stack as many Elemental Lashes as you can and equip the Red Hand. The Red Hand gives you Initiative 0 on your second shot... allowing you to vaporize enemies with back-to-back shots.

I'll check some of the durations. I wouldn't be surprised if there were some bugs in the implementation of Durations. Durations appear to tick at the end of the Subjects turn, excepting if they were applied during the Subjects CURRENT action. Example: Eder Applies Disciplined Barrage as a free action. He gets its effects for 2 turns after this one. Example #2: A chanter casts The Thunder Rolled, giving a 1 round Stun. The enemy takes their next turn, does nothing, and the Stunned condition expires. The enemy acts normally next round. (The Lover Cried Out should work this way) I'll have to think about Power Level scaling. With respect to The Lover Cried Out, it doesn't particularly affect anything, outside of empower. We have some new breakpoints, but non-empowered Power Level differentials won't kick in until you're close to endgame. The Thunder Rolled... Hmm. Multiplicative Power Level might make this worthwhile. Currently, once you hit The Lover Cried Out, I'd much rather Charm a group than do a little bit of damage and stun them. At PL 5, a FF would have +20% duration... times base duration or Base Duration + Intellect Bonus? I'll look into how the durations are actually calculated. Edit: Some Theory Crafting: At Level 10, we are at PL 4, giving the stun off of The Thunder Rolled: 15% PL Bonus. (Duration: ~5.75) 12/5.75 - 1 gives us a needed bonus of +108.6%. So... 32 Intellect? Not Easy but achievable w/Enfeeble: Enfeeble is multiplicative, I on the back-end I believe. We'll need a duration of 8 seconds to reach 2 round stuns with Enfeeble up. 8/5.75 -1 gives us a needed bonus of +39.1%. So... 18 Intellect at level 10. 22 Intellect from Level 1. w/empower: At Level 10, an Empowered The Thunder Rolled lasts 7 Seconds. 12/7-1 gives us a needed bonus of +71.4%. So... 25 Intellect. I'm not sure this changes too much. Enfeeble gives you some really low hanging fruit at 18 intellect. The other thing to take into account is criticals. Perhaps there's a crit-based spell build around Forbidden Fist. Wizard perhaps?

The TLDR: The optimal Resolve depends on whether you're really maxing out Intellect - which is optional as a Monk due to Duality of Mortal Presence. I am more worried about Power Level scaling. I'm not sure about the interaction between Power Level and Attributes. Are they Multiplicative? I am going to assume that duration increases between Power Level and Attributes is Additive. If not, there are a few breakpoints which will be interesting. In general though - The 10 to 6 second duration reduction is much more important for the FF than intelligence. You'll need +100% duration between abilities and Power Level. Any Intelligence score below 23 shouldn't effect your curse duration, even at level 20 with 10 Resolve. Previously, the 10 second base duration was so long, it was easy to get a long curse duration. The base duration decrease is a significant buff. In the TB Mode, we have some issues- Forbidden Fist's self curse appears to be almost hard coded to last until the end of the next round. You'll never have a duration of 0, and anything above will round up to 1 round. Getting a duration longer than 1 round requires 23+ Intellect. The TLDR? I think your optimal intellect is strictly based off of the desired duration/area of specific invocations. Specifically: PL 1 The Thunder Rolled - it is possible to get 2 round base duration stuns at higher levels and high intellect. PL 2 ...The Killers Froze Stiff - The base duration of 4 seconds makes hitting duration break points difficult. PL 3 Reny Daret's Ghost Spake- This thing lasts forever on TB. Enfeeble an enemy for truly hilarious durations (I've gotten 12 Rounds duration off a crit). PL 4 The Lover Cried out- The Lover Cried Out wants 20 Intellect for 2 round charm. Looking at the above, and assuming Duality of Mortal Presence for increased intellect, anything above 15 seems fine. The Lover Cried Out is interesting - At level 10 with 15 Intellect, you could empower the invocation for a 2 Round Charm. At 30 Intellect and Empower, you should reach a 3 Round Charm. At 3 Phrases... That's a bargain.

Thanks for the advice! I am currently looking at Forbidden Fist/Skald. I was playing around in the console, and the changes they've made to the Forbidden Curse duration are interesting [from 10 seconds ->6 Seconds]. With high Resolve, you can get a very small duration on the curse, allowing you to ramp up wounds and use Forbidden Fist freely (on RTwP). On Turn based this is a little borked- The curse will always expire at the end of the following round as a baseline.

I am almost finished with my 1st Play through. I would like to take suggestions for my next main character and his potential party members. I have a few prejudices: I played a Fighter/Rogue with my last play through. I'd prefer something different. I am thinking some form of caster. I think I'd like to avoid druid, or at least Relentless Storm - that Spell is borked. Thanks for the feed back!

In the next day or so, I will make my first trip to Ukaizo. Previously I had just made it out of Port Maje before character creation called to me. I wanted to share my experience as a new comer with fresh eyes. Difficulty: Path of The Damned, No Level Scaling Main Character I played a Male Dwarf Debonaire/Tactician for my Watcher. It's been an adventure. My party has rotated like a merry-go-round, with nearly every named Party Member spending sometime with me - with the exception of Mirke. Most of the characters were Dual-Classed. For Ukaizo I'll expect to bring Maia, Fish-Guy, Eder, and Xoti. Baby's 1st Steps -Port Maje and Deadlight So...there's no Kith to fight. I'm playing a pirate game and getting my butt handed to me by wild animals, zombies (vessels, oops!) and a random steam punk robot. My Debonaire's Charming ways did not see much use. I played very passively- playing up my character's winning ways and avoiding combat for the most part. Learning to Walk - Neketaka and Beyond It felt like most of the zones I visited had 1 very large combat. I felt like it wasn't uncommon to fight every enemy in an area in a single fight, and then go explore. Magran's Teeth sticks in my mind. In addition, Somewhere along the line I really felt the need for spell casters and AOE. Whether due to sub-optimal builds, equipment, or something else, combat feels long. To be fair, I'm playing on the highest difficulty, but I felt like both sides of the conflict were trying to kill each other with wet noodles. This gradually went away as I hit higher levels, until somewhere around Level 10-13, THINGS began to happen. Auto Attacks and melee felt really slow. Maybe I just don't understand how to optimize damage. Combats felt really long. There are a dearth of kith in the Deadfire. Debonaire's Charm got very little use. I discover that many things with faces that talk, are not in fact people.... I mean Kith. Some surprises for me: Not-Murlocs, Naga, and Spider-Faces are apparently not Kith. As I Debonaire, I feel decidedly un-charming. The power-gamer in me wants to lobby for these under-privileged foes dying on the edge of my blade. They deserve to be called kith too! End-Game- Bulking Up I started to pick up on or acquire some fun combinations. Serafen's 'Grenade Launchers' are a bunch of fun, but the real heroes are Xoti and Fish-Guy. Fish Guy in particular, with Relentless Storm is stupid good. At level 14, I have dubbed him 'Storm Fish'. Stunning every enemy, every round for 2-4 rounds is just ...dirty. On a side note, I love how the characters, freshly un-stunned, move at a low initiative the following round. Well done. I finally have a feel for how the game plays and I am looking forward to 'rolling' another character. It has been a blast. I don't know how much my feedback on classes is worth- I just completed the game. I have included my feelings on each class anyway. Fighter I like every ability in fighter. The class is just damn fun to play. Ranger Animal Companions look amazing. Evasive Fire .... is weird. Spending all of my Bond rolling around the screen and firing off shots like a bullet-time action movie is awesome. It didn't feel TOO strong - I did alot of damage, but killing enemies takes a certain amount of precision or small numbers of enemies. Even so, after I've completed my bullet-time sequence, having no abilities sucks. Chanter- I was surprised. Chanters are probably my favorite class. I had lots of fun 'writing' songs. Thanks for giving me a custom bard class to play. Wizard- Feels great. I love Buffing/Debuffing. Cipher- I can't say I care for them much right now. Maybe I'm just sore from Serafen turning my enemies invisible. They have almost entirely active abilities... and gaining focus seems slow. Grazing with a cipher feels awful. Barbarian- A little slow to start, I find I actually like them quite a bit. I love the numerous buffs they can apply to themselves, and they have an innate ability to get low-intitiative numbers. A little slow to start, I find I actually like them quite a bit. I love the numerous buffs they can apply to themselves, and the ability to get low initiative is interesting. Crushing Blow the most disappointing Talent for me. Clearing my initiative (setting it to zero) for getting a Killing Blow seems TERRIBLE. Especially when you read about it on the web. My tears have been shed and my teeth have been gnashed. Onward.Barbarian- A little slow to start, I find I actually like them quite a bit. I love the numerous buffs they can apply to themselves, and they have an innate ability to get low-intitiative numbers.

Are you saying that I can act twice in a round? Or that if my initiative is low enough I can act twice? Or at certain initiative break points relative to an enemy, my weapon attacks can fire twice? I haven't seen any of the above. All of my testing showed each participant acting once per round. I'll take a look later tonight to confirm. Edit: I think you're making a logical mistake - Abilities and durations use a "6 seconds = 1 Round" conversion. However, each character acts in a round, regardless of what their initiative is. I have characters acting on Initiative 9 or 10 all the time, and enemies acting after that. I have not witnessed any combatants acting twice in a round, or repeat attacks. Your actions on the current turn determine your initiative on the following round (there may be some grey area here). If all of the above is true, DPS conversions don't make much sense talking about Turn-based. You can't gain extra actions via low initiative. I don't know of any abilities that allow you to act AGAIN in combat. Ex: I believe Crushing Blow on the Barbarian moves you to Initiative 0 on the next round. Rounds can have a long initiative list... as stated, my current MC acts on Ini 9 regularly.

Why are you measuring in DPS for turn based? Initiative only appears to matter if you want to move BEFORE another character in combat. There doesn't appear to be any other benefit. @OP: I'm finishing up a PoTD TB playthrough right now - I found big 2-handers to be my favorites for pure Damage Per Round. Anecdotally, there wasn't significant difference. Upgraded gear, penetration, accuracy, and AOE abilities played more of a role than weapon style.

After the You really won't need resource regeneration after a few levels. Empowering characters will give you enough resources to finish battles. I like your proposed setup For reference, I'm running an unoptimized party in POTD- Empower on all characters will tide you through the combats.

@astrolulz: Chanter will go with just about anything. They benefit from multiclassing into active abilities. The Bellower in particular wants Sasha's Singing Scimitar to chain cast Invocations during combat- other than that, they're very flexible. Your invocations are very accurate and have a ton of penetration. And Thelee's comments about Summons is right on the money. If you wanted to pair a Bellower/Ranger, they'd go fine together. Marked for the Hunt is going to give really accurate invocations. I did some testing this evening to look at durations, using a fighter for ease of use. 15 Intelligence w/ +1 PL: Level 7 Fighter/Bellower invoking Wurm Summon: ~40 second duration Level 7 Fighter/No-Sub invoking wurm Summon: ~30 second duration. Bellower's can call in Reinforcements for a REALLY long time. In TBM the breakpoints are going to be really noticeable. At 42 second duration, you should have 7 rounds with your summons. On Bellower Builds (without testing/playthrough): Fighter/Monk/Wizard seem like excellent pairs with the bellower, providing something for you to do while you wait for your second volley, and easy access to an Intelligence Inspiration. 10 int is all you'll ever need! Druid might be fun. Lots of spell options. There's potential for some elemental themed builds. Tactician/Bellower- PBJ. Summons contribute to flanked, which leads to spamming of inspirations.

Afflictions get cleared pretty often in TB- Enemies tend to clear afflictions on their turn, and let enemies lose and reapply the flanked status. Sometimes you can set up a situation where your tactician can reapply flanked simply by moving in/out of engagement- restoring you to full resources. I haven't worked out the perfect setup for this... it has happened often enough over the last week I haven't needed to.

Not on Turn-Based Mode. You can trigger Brilliance by simply moving in many cases

Whatever comes your way! Its not weapon/play- style specific

Tactician/Cipher can be a lot of fun. Cipher has a number of abilities that lead to Flanked for the opposition. Once you have flanked, you Regen Focus every turn. Beguiler + Rogue is fun. Your Deception Cipher abilities restore focus on characters who have an Affliction or are flanked. Cast an AoE deception spell, and now your focus spending abilities generate focus. Casting from stealth will also allow you to generate focus. Beguiler will actually work with anything. It's a very self contained combo.

Are you planning on playing Real-Time or Turn Based? Each of the options you named are definitely viable. When it comes to just Active abilities, nothing really beats rogue... they have a ton of buttons to hit, and very few passive buffs. In addition to your list, you might think about Tactician/Rogue (subclass doesn't particularly matter). Rogue brings a bunch of ways to flank, while tactician allows you to keep mashing buttons. I'm having a blast with this combo on TB.

The 'line-fire' weapons are pretty fun in TBM. Currently running a Debonair/Tactician playthrough. Infinite multi-target Blinds are quite satisfying.

Tested. You can switch Grimoire's without using your action for the turn... all of your spells are disabled though. Bug?

Does BlackJackets. Action ability allow grimoire switching? Edit#1: It does. Strangely enough, you do not use your full action, though all of your spells are disabled for the turn. You can still attack or use another classes abilities. Edit#2: Switching Grimoires is a free action... it disables all wizard spells however. Other Class spells/abilities appear to work fine.

1st Post! Forbidden Fist + Chanter feels fun. On PotD, Duality of Mortal Presence + Forbidden Fist, you can stun lock the opponent. With 30 Intelligence and Enfeeble up: Stunning Blow stuns for 2 rounds (non-crit) The Waves Crashed Over stuns for 2 rounds (possibly on non-crit) "I'll Get You!" invocation frightens for an unholy long time (On Crit, Frighten lasted for 12 rounds) Negative Chant Crits could stack up long durations. A Forbidden Fist / Skald might be fun! I'll investigate breakpoints sometime tonight.